Normally a full schedule of games would be played on any June 6 as it is today, but 74 years ago, there was no baseball on June 6.

It was 1944 and the United States military and the Allied Forces were beginning the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis by launching the largest armada in history of ships, planes and men onto the beaches of France.

D-Day!

Baseball decided it was no time to play and all games were cancelled.

In the early morning 822 planes and 6,000 landing crafts carrying 176,000 men headed to Normandy. By dawn, 18,000 paratroopers were on the beach and the invasion commenced.

Among those on Utah Beach was a squat 19-year-old from St. Louis -- Seaman Second Class Lawrence Peter Berra, a catcher in the New York Yankees’ farm system and, at that moment, a gunner’s mate.

“It looked like the fireworks on the 4th of July,” Yogi, who became a Hall of Fame player and beloved figure in the game, would say afterwards.

Berra was not the only major league star to see combat – Warren Spahn was a combat engineer, Jerry Coleman flew 57 combat missions, Ralph Kiner was in the Naval Air Corps in the Pacific and the great Al Rosen was on an assault boat that landed on Okinawa. Bob Feller enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor and became a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, receiving six campaign ribbons and eight battle stars serving in both the North Atlantic and the Pacific.

Berra made his major league debut in 1946 and became a full-time star in ’48. Spahn posted the first of his 13 20-win seasons in ’47. Kiner and Rosen were two of the dominant sluggers of the next decade. Coleman joined the juggernaut Yankees and was part of six world champion teams, but took another break for the game to fly 63 more combat missions during the Korean War. Feller missed 3½ years and was as good as ever by ’47 when he threw 371 innings, going 26-15 with 348 strikeouts.

Berra, Spahn, Kiner and Feller are in the Hall of Fame and Rosen should be. Coleman became an honored broadcaster for the San Diego Padres.

All told more than 500 major leaguers served in the war and 4,076 minor leaguers did, too.

By July, baseball was back and the All-Star game was played in Pittsburgh where the National League defeated the American League, 7-1, with the Cardinals’ Stan Musial driving in one of the runs.

The Cardinals would go on to win the World Series, defeating the St. Louis Browns (remember them?), four games to two. Hal Newhouser won 29 games for the Tigers and Bill Nicholson had a 33-homer, 122 RBIs season for the Chicago Cubs, but 1944 would be remembered for the baseball that was not played on June 6.

There were no sacrifice bunts that year, just sacrifices!

Pete Donovan is a Palm Desert resident and former Los Angeles Times sports reporter. He can be reached at pwdonovan22@yahoo.com